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Results from the Multi-Yeast Amber Beer Experiment

Back in October, RIFT kicked off its Multi-Yeast Experiment. After brewing 50 gallons of wort together, each volunteer was given a carboy full of the amber wort to ferment with a yeast strain they had selected. The goal was to explore how different yeasts can express different flavors – all with the same base wort to work from.

This past Thursday (12/16), during our December club meeting, seven of the resulting beers were pulled together and we were able to do a group tasting. Overall, participants were very pleased with the results, although quite amazed by the range of characters and flavors the yeasts produced. To quote quote one club member, “some of (the beers) you would swear were a totally different recipe”.

During the tasting, Mark L. was generous to step up and play scribe for the evening. Below are his collected notes based on the groups discussion of each beer. They are presented in the order the beers were tasted (from what would be considered the cleanest yeasts to what would be considered the highly estery yeasts):

Thanks again to everyone who participated either as a volunteer brewer or taking part in the tasting. Both this and the Hop Experiments have been a rousing success and quite eye opening. We’ll certainly revisit these types of group events again in the future.